Quote:
Originally Posted by ChalkLine
It'd be madness for the USSR to nuke Australia unless a US warship is in port or they hit the telemetry stations at Pine Gap or North West Cape. Everything else is far less unimportant than tasking more warheads to critical European and US targets where the initial warheads may not get through.
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How would it be madness? Any form of retaliation Australia might mete out to the Soviets or their satellites is exactly the sort of thing a modest nuclear strike would be intended to prevent.
[QUOTE=ChalkLine;13921]It's all academic anyway. Both systems were designed that once confirmed nuke launches or strikes were observed the arsenals were immediately launched, because otherwise they would risk being destroyed in their silos. The crews knew they would be dead shortly anyway.
QUOTE]
Simply not true. If this were the case, we'd have been incinerated already due to the number of false alarms--some of them extremely convincing. In any event, the idea of massive automatic retaliation takes the fate of nations out of the hands of exactly the kinds of people who prefer to make important decisions themselves. The US (and presumably the other nuclear powers as well) haven't invested literally billions in communications so that a general can call up the President and tell him, "You're ******, sir. Sorry, you don't get a say. It's all automatic." It's a fact that some aspects of the system are automated. It's not a fact that the President gets no say.
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